Mass. AG Just Confirmed What Gun Rights Advocates Have Said All Along

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey just confirmed what Second Amendment advocates have been saying all along, that anti-gunners really do want to ban firearms.

Healey, a Democrat, unilaterally declared this week that “If a gun’s operating system is essentially the same as that of a banned weapon, or if the gun has components that are interchangeable with those of a banned weapon, it’s a ‘copy’ or ‘duplicate,’ and it is illegal.”

Alan Gottlieb, founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, told Liberty Park Press via email that Healey’s move “is an abuse of power.” He didn’t stop there.

“It is no different than President Obama’s illegal anti-gun executive orders,” said Gottlieb, who also is chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. “If these firearms were legal yesterday they are legal today. Black Guns Matter. A firearm should not be discriminated against because of its color.”

Maura Healey

Healey announced her action in an Op-Ed piece appearing in Wednesday’s Boston Globe. She also held a press conference yesterday morning to detail her actions. She told reporters that, “The gun industry does not get to decide what’s compliant. We do.”

“On Wednesday,” Healy wrote in her Globe article, “we are sending a directive to all gun manufacturers and dealers that makes clear that the sale of these copycat assault weapons is illegal in Massachusetts. With this directive, we will ensure we get the full protection intended when lawmakers enacted our assault weapons ban, not the watered-down version of those protections offered by gun manufacturers.”

For decades, Second Amendment advocates like Gottlieb have maintained that the ultimate goal of gun control proponents is not to actually “control” firearms, but to eliminate them from private ownership. Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton has told supporters that she believes the Supreme Court was wrong on the Second Amendment in its 2008 Heller ruling.

In California, legislation has been passed to require background checks on ammunition purchases, and further restrict ownership of semiautomatic modern sport/utility rifles. The guns are also severely restricted elsewhere, as in neighboring Connecticut, New York and a few other states. Critics argue that FBI crime data indicates this ban is the answer to a problem that doesn’t exist because these rifles weren’t involved in any homicides in 2014, the most recent year for which data is available.

“This ban on semi-auto firearms must be stopped before gun prohibitionists in other states try to enact similar bans by fiat,” Gottlieb stated.

The timing of Healey’s announcement, one week before her party holds its convention in Philadelphia and adopts a platform that includes more gun control rhetoric, is hardly a coincidence, some gun rights activists privately suggest.

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About Dave Workman

Dave Workman is an award-winning career journalist with an expertise in firearms and the outdoors. He is the author of several books dealing with firearms politics. He has a degree in editorial journalism from the University of Washington and is a lifelong Washington resident.